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Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

David Ogilvy

Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.
DAVID OGILVY

Goal Hire Leaving People Remark Settle Yourself
Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.
DAVID OGILVY

Believe Goodness Live Product Writing Yourself
I avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in their marketing mix. They have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Avoid Awkward Cash Client Factor Myself Purpose
Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.
DAVID OGILVY

Business Idiot Infest Ourselves Pretend
There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don’t destroy them. They lay golden eggs.
DAVID OGILVY

Agency Egg Genius Gold Man
I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.
DAVID OGILVY

Drink Executive Illumination Marketing Myself Notice Research
The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Information Persuasion
Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Corruption Editor
Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising.
DAVID OGILVY

Abstract Illustration Manufacturer Myself Painting Reading
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
DAVID OGILVY

Best Funny Ideas Possible Thinking Yourself
Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Sale
I did not feel ‘evil’ when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.
DAVID OGILVY

Attraction Edge Evil Feeling Help Myself Starvation Time
The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Head Kind Product Reading Ticket
It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially – like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye.
DAVID OGILVY

Acceptance Attack Bad Eyes Invite Magazine Man Manner Strike
Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped.
DAVID OGILVY

Afraid Competition Manufacturer Product Question Sale Secret Stop
If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.
DAVID OGILVY

Creative Sale
Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertising Economy Enemy Freedom Person Removal Society Transformation
Political advertising ought to be stopped. It’s the only really dishonest kind of advertising that’s left. It’s totally dishonest.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Honesty Politics Stop
The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.
DAVID OGILVY

Consumer Herself Wife
Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Family Myself Reading Writing
The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.
DAVID OGILVY

Career Life Secret Time
Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertising Dangerous Enemy Ignorance Research Signal
What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Buy Consumer Decision Form
Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Influence Reflection Society
The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
DAVID OGILVY

Big Excellence Profit Pursuit Satisfaction
What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Important Yourself
Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.
DAVID OGILVY

Advertisement Campaign Exception Live Wife World

Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

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Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

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